Company
history

The company was founded in May 1982 as the video game development
group of Lucasfilm
Limited, the film production company of George Lucas. Lucas had wanted his company
to branch out into other areas of entertainment, and so he
cooperated with Atari to produce
video games.

The first results of this collaboration were unique action games
like Ballblazer and Rescue on
Fractalus!. Beta versions of both games were leaked to
pirate bulletin boards exactly one week after Atari received
unprotected copies for a marketing review, and were in wide
circulation months before the original release date. In 1984, they
were released for the Atari 5200 under the Lucasfilm
Games label. Versions for home computers were not released until
1985, by publisher Epyx.
Lucasfilm's next two games were Koronis Rift and The Eidolon. Their
first games were only developed by Lucasfilm, and a publisher would
distribute the games. Atari published their games for Atari
systems, Activision
and Epyx would do their computer publishing. Maniac Mansion
was one of the first games to be published and developed by
Lucasfilm Games.

In 1990, in a reorganization of the
Lucas companies, the Games Division of Lucasfilm became part of the
newly created LucasArts Entertainment Company,
together with Industrial Light &
Magic and Skywalker Sound. Later ILM and
Skywalker Sound were consolidated in Lucas Digital Ltd. and
LucasArts became the official name of the former Games
Division.

Logo

The "Gold Guy" LucasArts logo (1991–2005)

The original Lucasfilm Games logo was based upon the existing
Lucasfilm movie logo. There were a number of variations on it.

The long-lived LucasArts logo, affectionately known as the "Gold
Guy", was introduced in 1991 and consisted of a crude gold-colored
figure resembling a petroglyph, standing on a purple letter "L"
inscribed with the company name. The figure had its hands up in the
air, as if a sun was rising from behind him. It was also said to
resemble an eye, with the rays of the sun as eyelashes. The logo
was revised in late 2005, losing the letter "L" pedestal and
introducing a more rounded version of the gold-colored figure. In
the games, the figure sometimes does an action like throw a lightsaber or cast Force Lightning. The logo is possibly a
reference to the ending of George Lucas' first film, THX 1138, in which the
silhouette of the main character stands with his arms raised during
sunset.

In 1998, LucasArts approached the Finnish game developer Remedy
Entertainment, citing that their logo was copied from the top
portion of the LucasArts logo and threatening legal action.[3] Remedy
was by that time already in the process of redesigning their logo,
so they complied by taking the old logo offline from their website
and introducing a new logo a little later.

Adventure
games

The first adventure game developed by Lucasfilm Games was
Labyrinth (1986), based on the Lucasfilm movie of the same
name. ICOM'sDeja Vu inspired the 1987 title Maniac
Mansion which introduced SCUMM, the scripting language behind most of the
company's later adventure offerings. The adventures released in the
following years, such as Zak McKracken and
the Alien Mindbenders (1988), Indiana Jones and the
Last Crusade: The Graphic Adventure (1989), LOOM
(1990) and especially the critically-acclaimed The Secret of Monkey
Island (1990), helped Lucasfilm Games build a reputation
as one of the leading developers in the genre. It was often
referred to as one of the two big names in the field, competing
with Sierra On-line as a developer of
high quality adventures. The first half of the 1990s was the heyday
for the company's adventure fame, with classic titles such as
Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge (1991), Indiana Jones and
the Fate of Atlantis (1992) and the Maniac Mansion sequel
Day of the Tentacle (1993).

In the latter half of the decade, the popularity of adventure
games faded and the costs associated with game development
increased as high-resolution art and CD quality audio became
standard fare. The PC market wanted titles that would show off
expensive new graphics cards to best effect, a change
replicated in the home console market as the 3D capabilities of the
PlayStation, Sega Saturn and Nintendo 64 dictated
the nature of the majority of games produced for those platforms.
The adventure genre—two-dimensional, focused on story, script and
puzzle solving—was no longer popular with the masses of new
gamers.

LucasArts still managed to release commercially moderately
successful titles: The Curse of Monkey
Island (1997) was the last LucasArts adventure game to
retain traditional two-dimensional graphics and point-and-click
interface. Grim
Fandango (1998) was LucasArts' first attempt to convert 2D
adventure to a 3D environment. The game interface suffered most
from this conversion, with control of the protagonist becoming
unwieldy and less intuitive than with the traditional mouse
interface. However, the highly stylised visuals, superb voice
acting and sophisticated writing more than made up for this flaw,
earning Grim Fandango many plaudits, including GameSpot's Game of
the Year award.[4]

Escape from Monkey
Island (2000), the fourth installment to the Monkey Island
series, featured the same control scheme as Grim Fandango and was
generally well received. It is to date the last adventure game the
company has released. A sequel to Full
Throttle and a new Sam & Max game were in development
but these projects were cancelled, in 2003 and 2004 respectively,
before the games were finished. When the rights to the Sam and Max
franchise expired in 2005, the creator of Sam and Max, Steve Purcell, took
ownership. He then licensed Sam and Max to Telltale Games to
be developed into an episodic game. Telltale Games is made up
primarily of former LucasArts employees who had worked on the Sam
and Max sequel and were let go after the project was canceled.[5]

LucasArts halted adventure game development for the next five
years, focusing instead on their Star Wars games. They
remained silent and did not re-release their old games on digital
distribution platforms, as other studios were doing at the
time. It was not until 2009 that LucasArts returned to
the genre. On June 1, 2009, they announced both The Secret of
Monkey Island: Special Edition, a remake of the original game with updated
graphics, music and voice work, and Tales
of Monkey Island, a new episodic installment in the
Monkey Island series developed by Telltale
Games

Then, on July 6, they announced that they would be re-releasing
a number of their classic games, including Indiana Jones and
the Fate of Atlantis and LOOM, on Steam. The re-releases were,
for the first time, native versions built for Microsoft
Windows. This was the first time in many years that the studio
had offered any support for its classic adventure titles.

The release of the unofficial SCUMM virtual machine, ScummVM, has led to something of a resurgence
for LucasArts adventure games among present-day gamers. Using
ScummVM, legacy adventure titles can easily be run on modern
computers and even more unusual platforms such as video game
consoles, mobile phones and PDAs.

In 1988, Battlehawks 1942 launched a
trilogy of World War
II air combat simulations, giving the player a chance to fly as
an American or Japanese pilot in the Pacific Theater.
Battlehawks 1942 was followed by Their Finest Hour: The Battle
of Britain (1989), recreating the battle between the Luftwaffe and RAF for
Britain's air supremacy. The trilogy ended with Secret Weapons of the
Luftwaffe in 1991, in which the player could choose to fly
on either the American or German side. The trilogy was lauded for
its historical accuracy and detailed supplementary material—Secret
Weapons of the Luftwaffe, for instance, was accompanied by a
224-page historical manual.

The World War II trilogy was created by a team led by Lawrence
Holland, a game designer who later founded Totally Games.
Totally Games would continue to develop games almost exclusively to
LucasArts, the most noted outcome of the symbiosis being the X-Wing
series. They were also responsible for LucasArts' 2003 return to
the aerial battles of World War II with Secret Weapons Over
Normandy, a title released on PlayStation 2, Xbox and PC.

First
Star Wars games

Even though LucasArts had created games based on other Lucasfilm
properties before (Labyrinth, Indiana Jones),
they did not use the most promising Lucasfilm license until the
early 1990s: Star Wars action games began appearing on the
Nintendo consoles, but were developed by other companies for
LucasArts. The first in-house development was the space combat
simulator X-Wing, developed by Larry Holland's team, which
went on to spawn a successful series.

The CD-ROM-only Star Wars game Rebel Assault became one
of the biggest successes of the company and was considered a killer
app for CD-ROM drives in the early 1990s.

From 2005 to 2007, LucasArts published the three games in the
Lego Star
Wars series.

First-person shooters

After the unprecedented success of id Software's Doom
the PC gaming market shifted towards production of
three-dimensional first person
shooters. LucasArts contributed to this trend with the 1995
release of Star Wars: Dark Forces, a first person shooter
that successfully transplanted the Doom formula to a Star Wars
setting. The Dark Forces Strategy guide claims that development was
well underway before Doom was released and that the game was pushed
back once Doom hit shelves so that it could be polished. The game
was well received and spawned a new franchise: the Jedi
Knight games. This began with the sequel to Dark
Forces, Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II released in 1997;
this game reflected the changing face of PC gaming, being one of
the first games to appreciably benefit when used in conjunction
with a dedicated 3D graphics card like 3dfx's Voodoo range. The game
received an expansion pack, Mysteries of the Sith, in 1998 and a
full sequel in 2002 with Star Wars: Jedi Knight II: Jedi
Outcast. 2003's Star Wars: Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy
can be seen as a spin-off from the series, but was less well
received by reviewers, who complained that the franchise was
becoming formulaic.

In the New
Millennium

As the quantity of Star Wars games increased, many critics felt
the quality began to drop; this was especially noted with the
titles released since the cinematic release of The Phantom Menace.

In 2002, LucasArts recognized that the over-reliance on Star
Wars was reducing the quality of its output, and announced that
future releases would be at least 50% non-Star Wars-related.
However, many of the original titles were either unsuccessful or
even cancelled before release and currently LucasArts has again
mainly Star Wars titles in production.

2003 saw the fruitful collaboration of LucasArts and BioWare on the exceptionally
well reviewed role-playing game,
Knights of the Old Republic. Combining a three-dimensional
environment with the type of storytelling and writing that made
LucasArts' early adventure games so memorable, this game was seen
as breathing new life into the Star Wars franchise. Its 2004 sequel
Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords continued
in the same vein, attempting to adopt a similar template as the
original, uniting voice acting with an unfolding story which picked
up where the last game left off. However, LucasArts was criticized
for forcing the developer Obsidian Entertainment to
release the sequel too early, resulting in a significant amount of
unfinished content being cut from the game and what many consider
to be a disappointing and convoluted storyline with an incomplete
ending. Also the rush release of this game to the PC platform
caused many bugs and crashes. This still has not been fixed by
patches.

In 2003 LucasArts and the Star Wars franchise also branched out
in a new direction—the world of the MMORPG, with the creation of
Star
Wars Galaxies. After a successful launch, the first
expansion, Jump to Lightspeed, was released in
2004. The new expansion featured the addition of real-time space
combat. This was continued in Rage of the Wookies, an
additional expansion which added an additional planet for users to
explore. Also, a new expansion, Trials of Obi-Wan was released
on November 1, 2005 consisting of several new missions focusing on
the Episode 3 planet, Mustafar. While Star Wars Galaxies
still retains a devoted following, it has also alienated many
players. Although it is currently the most popular class in the
game, Star Wars Galaxies has chosen to ignore the timeline
established in the original films, during which the game is set,
and has allowed players to play as Jedi characters. The game has
also undergone several major redesigns, which have been received
with decidedly mixed reactions by players. Perhaps in one of the
most telling examples of problems with the game, smugglers are
actually still unable to smuggle, over three years after the game
launched. Improvements into the game are still undergoing with the
publish plan giving all the combat and non-combat professions
diversity in skill tree boxes similar to the well-known MMO World
of Warcraft.

Restructuring under Jim
Ward

In April 2004, Jim Ward, VP of marketing, online and global
distributions at Lucasfilm, was appointed president of
LucasArts.[7]
Ward performed a top-to-bottom audit of LucasArts infrastructure,
describing the company's state as "quite a mess."[8]
In 2003, LucasArts had reportedly grossed just over $100 million
according to NPD,
primarily from its Star Wars titles – significantly less
than the grosses from the year's top single titles such as
Halo.[7]
Ward produced a five-year investment plan to refit the company.
Previous Star Wars games had been produced by external
developers such as Raven Software, Bioware and Obsidian;
Ward now prioritized making LucasArts' internal game development
work effectively and adapt to the evolving games industry. Star
Wars: Battlefront, Star Wars: Republic Commando, and
Star Wars: Episode III survived cuts that closed down
other in-development games and reduced staff from about 450 to 190
employees.[8]

In 2004, LucasArts released Star Wars: Battlefront,
based on the same formula as the popular Battlefield series of games. It ended
up becoming the best-selling Star Wars game of all time to
that point, aided by a marketing tie-in with the original trilogy DVD release.[9] Its
sequel, Star Wars: Battlefront II, was released November
1, 2005 and features new locales such as Episode III planets
Mustafar, Mygeeto, etc., in addition to space combat, playable
Jedi, and new special units like Bothan spies and Imperial
officers.

In May 2005, LucasArts released Revenge of the Sith, a
third person action game based on the film. Also in 2005, LucasArts
released Star Wars: Republic Commando, and one of their
few non-Star Wars games, Mercenaries, developed by Pandemic
Studios.

On February 16, 2006, LucasArts released Star Wars: Empire
at War, a real-time strategy game developed by
Petroglyph. September 12, 2006 saw the
release of Lego Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy, the
sequel to the popular Lego Star Wars: The Video Game.
Lego Star Wars II follows the same basic format as the
first game, but, as the name indicates, covers the original
Star Wars trilogy. On September 16, 2008, Star Wars:
The Force Unleashed was released to mixed reviews, though
quickly became the best-selling Star Wars game of all
time.

Jim Ward left the company early February 2008, for personal
reasons. He was replaced by Howard Roffman as interim president,
with Darrell Rodriguez taking Roffman's place in April 2008.[10][11]

Future

In a 2006 GameSpot interview, Monkey Island co-creator Ron Gilbert claimed
that the true secret of Monkey Island has yet to be revealed, and
that he wished to make a fifth Monkey Island game to conclude the
series.[12]
During television network G4's coverage of the 2006 E3 Convention, a LucasArts executive was
asked about the return of popular franchises such as Monkey Island.
The executive responded that the company was currently focusing on
new franchises, and that LucasArts may return to the "classic
franchises" in 2015, though it was unclear as to whether the date
was put forwards as an actual projection, or hyperbole.[13]

On June 1, 2009, LucasArts announced a re-imagining of the
Secret of Monkey Island titled The Secret of Monkey
Island: Special Edition. This release includes updates
graphics, sound and music, and full voice acting. In addition,
LucasArts also announced a new episodic game in the Monkey
Island franchise titled "Tales of Monkey Island".

The successor to Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II
The Sith Lords has been announced in the form of the MMORPGStar Wars: The Old Republic, currently under development
by BioWare.[14]

In May 2007, LucasArts announced Fracture and stated that
"new intellectual properties serve a vital role to the growth of
LucasArts". Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction was
labelled the number one new IP in 2005 and Thrillville the number one new children's
IP in 2006.[15]Free Radical Design announced that they
lost the rights to develop Star Wars: Battlefront III in
October, prior to them going into administration. It had been in
development for two years.[16] They
will also publish Star Wars: The Clone Wars - Republic
Heroes for all current systems.[17]

Other
releases

From 1995 to 1998, LucasArts released an annual compilation of
games, the LucasArts Archives series, each
containing three to six games plus a selection of demos of recent and
upcoming games. The second and fourth volumes of LucasArts
Archives were Star Wars-themed. Later games published
under the LucasArts Archives brand were budget-priced
reissues of individual games.

In 1996, LucasArts released Afterlife, a
sim game in which the player builds their
own Heaven and Hell, with several jokes and puns (such as a
prison in Hell called San QuentinTarantino).
In 2002, LucasArts released a compilation CD filled with music from
their past games. The album is titled The Best of LucasArts
Original Soundtracks and features music from The Monkey Island
Series, Grim Fandango, Outlaws, and The Dig.

A video game titled Traxion was announced.
Traxion was a rhythm game which was under development for
the PlayStation Portable by British
developer Kuju Entertainment, scheduled to be
released in Q4 2006
by LucasArts, but was instead cancelled in January 2007. The game
was to feature a number of minigames, and would support imported songs
from the player's own mp3 library as well as the game's bundled
collection.

From StrategyWiki, the free strategy guide and
walkthrough wiki

LucasArts is an American video game developer
and publisher. The company was famous for its line of graphic
adventure games, although today it mainly publishes games based on
the Star Wars
franchise.

The company was founded in May 1982 as the video game development group of
Lucasfilm Ltd., the film production company of George Lucas. Lucas
had wanted his company to branch out into other areas of
entertainment, and so he cooperated with Atari to produce video
games.

The first results of this collaboration were unique action games
like Ballblazer and Rescue on
Fractalus!. Beta versions of both games were leaked to pirate
bulletin boards exactly one week after Atari received unprotected
copies for a marketing review, and were in wide circulation months
before the original release date. In 1984, they were released for the Atari
5200 under the Lucasfilm Games label. Versions for home
computers were not released until 1985, by publisher Epyx. Lucasfilm's next
two games were Koronis Rift and The Eidolon.

In 1990, in
a reorganization of the Lucas companies, the Games Division of
Lucasfilm became part of the newly created LucasArts Entertainment
Company, together with Industrial Light & Magic and Skywalker
Sound. Later ILM and Skywalker Sound were consolidated in Lucas
Digital Ltd. and LucasArts became the official name of the former
Games Division.

Contents

Origins

The Lucasflim Games logo

The company had its beginnings in May 1982 in the Games Group of Lucasfilm Ltd., the film production company of George Lucas. Lucas had wanted his company to branch out into other areas of entertainment, and so he cooperated with Atari to produce video games. The first results of this collaboration were unique action games like Ballblazer and Rescue on Fractalus. However, they were not released at first because pirated copies were in circulation months before the original release date. In 1984, they were released for the Atari 5200 under the Lucasfilm Games label. Versions for home computers were not released until 1985, when publisher Epyx showed interest in the games.

The Adventure games

Lucasfilm Games released its first adventure game in 1986: Labyrinth, based on the Lucasfilm movie of the same name.

In 1987, the adventure game Maniac Mansion was released, which effectively spawned the subgenre of point-and-click adventure games. It was followed by more adventures of high quality and in the following years Lucasfilm built a reputation for producing the best games of the genre. Amongst the early LucasArts classics was the much-loved Monkey Island (later followed by three sequels), an adventure game notable for the quality of its comedic script, the absurd solutions to many of its puzzles and the invulnerability of its protagonist, which was quite an innovation in a genre where choosing the wrong thing to say could often result in instant death.

Simulations

The company also started producing military simulation games, the first of which were the naval simulations PHM Pegasus and Strike Fleet. In 1988, Battlehawks 1942 was released, later followed by Their Finest Hour and Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe. The WW2 Air Combat Trilogy, as it was later called, was created by Lawrence Holland's team, who later founded their own company in Totally Games.

The early 1990s

In 1990, in a reorganization of the Lucas companies, the Games Division of Lucasfilm became part of the newly created LucasArts Entertainment Company, together with Industrial Light & Magic and Skywalker Sound. Later ILM and Skywalker Sound were consolidated in Lucas Digital Ltd. and LucasArts became the official name of the former Games Division.

Even though LucasArts had created games based on other Lucasfilm properties before (Labyrinth, Indiana Jones), they didn't use the most promising Lucasfilm license until the early 1990s: Star Wars action games began appearing on the Nintendoconsoles, but were developed by other companies for LucasArts. The first in-house development was the space combat simulatorX-Wing, developed by Larry Holland's team, which went on to spawn a successful series.

The CD-ROM-only Star Wars game Rebel Assault became one of the biggest successes of the company and was considered a killer app for CD-ROM drives in the early 1990s. Another game that utilised the new technology of the CD-ROM drive was 1993's Day of the Tentacle, the first LucasArts adventure game to have a full spoken soundtrack available on the game's release rather than relying on text.

The first person shooter

After the unprecedented success of id Software's Doom the PC gaming market shifted towards production of three dimensional first person shooters. LucasArts contributed to this trend with the 1995 release of Star Wars: Dark Forces, a first person shooter that successfully transplanted the Doom formula to a Star Wars setting. The game was well received and spawned a new franchise: the Jedi Knight games. This began with the sequel to Dark Forces, Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II released in 1997; this game reflected the changing face of PC gaming, being one of the first games to appreciably benefit when used in conjunction with a dedicated 3d graphics card like 3dfx's Voodoo range. The game received an expansion pack, Mysteries of the Sith, in 1998 and a full sequel in 2002 with Star Wars: Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast. 2003's Star Wars: Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy can be seen as a spin-off from the series, but was less well received by reviewers, who complained that the franchise was becoming formulaic.

Apart from Starwars-themed 3D shooters, LucasArts also created the western-themed game Outlaws in 1997.

In 2004, Lucasarts released Star Wars: Battlefront, based on the same formula as the popular Battlefield 1942 games. It has ended up being the best-selling Star Wars game of all time.

The last wave of LucasArts Adventure games 1997-2000

LucasArts' focus on three dimensional action games was detrimental to their line of adventures. The PC game market, traditionally the home of the adventure game, was being driven by technological change. The market wanted titles that would show off expensive new graphics cards to best effect, a change replicated in the home console market as the 3d capabilities of the SonyPlayStation and its competitors the Sega Saturn and Nintendo's N64 dictated the nature of the majority of games produced for those platforms. The adventure genre, two dimensional, focused on story, script and puzzle solving was seen as no longer popular with gamers.

However, there was a brief resurgence in the genre between 1997 and 2000. The Curse of Monkey Island was the last LucasArts adventure game to retain traditional two dimensional graphics and the tried-and-tested point and click interface. It was followed by Grim Fandango, arguably LucasArts' finest adventure game, and the first attempt to convert 2d adventure to the gimmick of 3d games. The game interface suffered most from this conversion, with control of the protagonist becoming unweildy and less intuitive than the traditional mouse interface. However, the highly stylised graphics, superb voice acting and sophisticated writing more than made up for this flaw. Escape from Monkey Island replicated Grim Fandango's graphical engine and control system, and was well reviewed. However, since then LucasArts have continued to prioritise action games over traditional adventure games, a consistent position that led to a sequel to Sam'n'Max Hit The Road being aborted in 2004 despite rumours that it was 85% complete. This, combined with the 2003 cancellation of a sequel to Full Throttle has led fans of adventure gaming to surmise that the traditional LucasArts adventure game is dead.

2000-Present

As the quantity of Star Wars games increased, many critics felt the quality began to drop; this was especially noted with the titles released since the cinematic release of The Phantom Menace.

In 2002, LucasArts recognized that the over-reliance on Star Wars was reducing the quality of its output, and announced that future releases would be at least 50% non-Star Wars-related. However, many of the original titles were either unsuccessful or even cancelled before release and currently LucasArts has again mainly Star Wars titles in production.

2003 saw the fruitful collaboration of LucasArts and BioWare on the exceptionally well reviewed role-playing game, Knights of the Old Republic. Combining a three dimensional environment with the type of storytelling and writing that made LucasArts' early adventure games so memorable, this game has been seen as breathing new life into the Star Wars franchise. Its 2005 sequel Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords continued in the same vein, uniting top notch voice acting with an absorbing unfolding story.

In 2003 LucasArts and the Star Wars franchise also branched out in a new direction—the world of the MMORPG, with the creation of Star Wars Galaxies. After a successful launch, the first expansion, Jump to Lightspeed, was released in 2004. The new expansion featured the addition of real time space combat.

In May 2005, LucasArts released Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, a third person action game based on the film. More Star Wars games are planned for later in the year, including Star Wars: Empire at War, a real-time strategy game developed by Petroglyph Games.

External links

Official LucasArts website

A fanpage dedicated to this company (with a strong accent on adventure gaming)

A fanpage dedicated to the Jedi Knight series

The Lucasfilm Computer Division Games Project is born by Peter Langston